I’m worried about the link between freedom/autonomy and trust, though. Trust is treated here as a concern that should be addressed (better: a myth that should be dispelled) in the interest of getting male contraception to market. While this seems true enough, there seems an equally important issue regarding trust: where a person’s trust in her partner is unwarranted, that naive trust can often serve to undermine her autonomy. X makes plans that involves Y doing some action; X trusts Y to do that action; Y fails to do so; X’s plans don’t pan out; X has lost some control over her life.

I realize, of course, that I’m implicitly supporting the stereotype of women as blindly trusting their men, but doesn’t the finding that 98% of women trust their partner to use contraception seem a bit, I don’t know, troubling? I was under the impression (correct me if I am incorrect) that the misuse rate of female oral contraception was somewhere on the order of 2%; one would suspect that the misuse rate of a similar device by men would be higher, assuming that men view themselves as having less to lose by failing to contracept.